Category: adhd

What Happens to Those Who Survive School Shootings?

Another week, another school shooting. The shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is the eighth school shooting resulting in death or injury this year, yet we have only completed seven weeks. It is, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the 1,607th mass shooting since the rampage of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, widely thought to have been the country’s best hope at changing gun control laws.

It didn’t. And gun violence in schools continues.

But in the midst of the gun control debate, it can be easy to forget that there are humans—often children—who have borne witness to terrifying nightmarish scenes that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. What will happen to them?

While much research has been done into the minds and motives of mass shooters, the psychology of school shooting survivors is in its infancy—though the rate and increasing population of subjects means that it is a burgeoning field. According to The Washington Post, there are more than 150,000 school shooting survivors since the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, considered to be the first of modern school mass shootings.

What Happens to Those Who Survive School Shootings?

How to Beat Procrastination

Procrastination comes in many disguises. We might resolve to tackle a task, but find endless reasons to defer it. We might prioritize things we can readily tick off our to-do list—answering emails, say—while leaving the big, complex stuff untouched for another day. We can look and feel busy, while artfully avoiding the tasks that really matter. And when we look at those rolling, long-untouched items at the bottom of our to-do list, we can’t help but feel a little disappointed in ourselves.

The problem is our brains are programmed to procrastinate. In general, we all tend to struggle with tasks that promise future upside in return for efforts we take now.That’s because it’s easier for our brains to process concrete rather than abstract things, and the immediate hassle is very tangible compared with those unknowable, uncertain future benefits. So the short-term effort easily dominates the long-term upside in our minds—an example of something that behavioral scientists call present bias.

How can you become less myopic about your elusive tasks? It’s all about rebalancing the cost-benefit analysis: make the benefits of action feel bigger, and the costs of action feel smaller. The reward for doing a pestering task needs to feel larger than the immediate pain of tackling it.

Harvard Business Review

The Best Medicine for ADHD isn’t Necessarily Medicine

Steve and Michelle were desperate—their 6-year-old son, Sam, was diagnosed with ADHD soon after entering first grade.  Sam’s behavior seemed outright defiant—he “ignored” being called and he moved constantly, often from room to room even when being directly spoken to. Sam let out bloodcurdling screams when forced to stop playing a game on the iPad. Sam’s teacher had struggled with some similar behaviors in class and his guidance counselor said Sam needed to be on medication. Steve and Michelle were not so sure, but began to wonder if they were being negligent by not putting him on Ritalinor something similar.

Despite the relentless advertising in parenting magazines and websites, and the occasional coercion by some school personnel, there is a good chance your young ADHD child may not need medication. Or at least not yet. The Centers For Disease control just released results from their first national study to look at therapy, medication, and dietary supplements to treat kids with ADHD ages 4-17.

Psychology Today

A.D.H.D. Experts Re-evaluate Study’s Zeal for Drugs

Twenty years ago, more than a dozen leaders in child psychiatry received $11 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to study an important question facing families with children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Is the best long-term treatment medication, behavioral therapy or both?

New York Times